The color of opinion: Blacks are not even 10% of the columnists of the country’s main newspapers; situation even worse for black women

Note from BW of Brazil: The purpose of our little blog is present news coming out of Brazil from the racial perspective, bring a bit more visibility to Afro-Brazilians and to present information that provides the very reason that such a blog is even necessary. It would be fair to assume that over the course of the last four and a half years, material on this has sufficiently proven the existence of vast racial inequalities in Brazilian society. And a fair amount of the articles have actually shown some of the reasons for which such inequalities exist.

O Globo, Folha de S. Paulo and Estadão (Estado de S.Paulo), the main newspapers in the country

The color of opinion: Blacks are not even 10% of the columnists of the country’s main newspapers

A survey conducted by Gemaa shows that the Folha de S. Paulo, for example, has no black woman as a columnist. In all, men and whites are the majority

By Beatriz Sanz

Brazil is the country with the largest black population outside Africa. This diversity, however, is not represented in various segments of our society. In universities, blacks continue to struggle to access education through quotas. The traditional media journalism has also not shown itself to be a friendly place for blacks.

This is what a study done by Gemaa (Grupo de Estudos Multidisciplinares de Ações Afirmativas or Multidisciplinary Studies of Affirmative Action Group) of the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ) shows. The study profiles the columnists of the three largest newspapers in Brazil: O Globo, Folha de S. Paulo and Estadão.

In the three newspapers columnists there are more men than women, being that in O Globo, Folha and Estadão women are respectively 26%, 27% and 28% of columnists. This contrasts with the 2015 IBGE data show that women are 51.4% of the population.

But the situation is even worse when it comes to the representation of the black population. According to the IBGE, 54% of Brazilians consider themselves black. In journalism, however, O Globo is the newspaper that has the most blacks as columnists and they are only 9% of the total. Folha has 4% of black columnists and Estadão only 1%.

If we take into account the issue of gender and race, the situation is even more serious, as Folha de S. Paulo has no black woman giving her opinion in the newspaper, which has already declared itself openly against the quotas more than once.

The director of research, João Feres Júnior, the coordinator of Gemma says that this profile of columnists reduces the perspective.

“Men don’t pay attention to the issues faced by women, just like white people are less able of problematizing racism experienced by black people every day,” explained the researcher.

A survey in 2013 by Fenaj (National Federation of Journalists) shows that only 23% of Brazilian journalists declared themselves black and 1% indigenous.